to pitch camp, he helped her to alight and drew her with him. The
woman remained on her mount.

Gathering up sticks, dead needles of cedar and last year's leaves, he
made a fire upon which he heaped fuel till it lighted up the near-by
slopes of the hills and roared jovially in the broad wind.

It was a pocket in the heart of high hills into which they had fled.
The bold, sure line of a Roman road divided it, cutting tyrannically
through the cowed hovels of the town as an arrow drives through a
flock of pigeons. On either side were the dim shapes of great rocks
and semi-recumbent cedars. Retiring into shadow were the darker
outlines of the surrounding circle of hills, rived by intervals of
black night where wadies entered. From their summits the flying arch
of the heavens sprang, printed with a few faint stars, but all
silvered with the flood-light of a moon cold and pure as the frost
itself. It was unsympathetic, aloof and wild--a cold place into which
to bring broken hearts to assume banishment from the comfort and
companionship of mankind.

Laodice slowly and with effort began to separate those belongings
which were to be laid upon the fire from those which were too
necessary to be burned. The woman alighted but, on offering to assist,
was warned away from the girl with a menacing gesture of Momus' great
arm. The stranger drew herself up suddenly with a wrath that she
hardly controlled but came no nearer Laodice. When the girl finally
finished her selection, the woman begged permission to attend to the
camels and getting the beasts on their feet led them together to be
tethered.